


The Wake Up Call

by notabadday



Category: The West Wing, West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 13:48:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/622850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notabadday/pseuds/notabadday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-canon - Josh is on the Santos re-election campaign when he calls Donna. This is just an exchange between the two of them, the quality of which entirely depends on how in-character this feels. It's as long as it is because it's at least partially inspired by the endlessly long phone calls that my best friend and I have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wake Up Call

Pulling his shoes off as he perched on the side of his bed, Josh reached into his jacket pocket for his personal cell. “Hey, is this a bad time?”

 “It’s 1am.”

 “Is it a bad time?”

 “No,” Donna said softly. She smiled to herself, glad to hear from him.

 “What are you doing?”

 “I’m in the bath,” she teased.

 “Thank you for the visual.”

 “You’re welcome honey.”

 “Don’t sound so pleased with yourself.”

 “I’m not. I miss you. This bathtub is never the same without you, you know that. How goes the trip? Have you fallen in love with any cute TV commercial actresses?”

 “No, but there’s still time.”

 “And besides, you’re madly in love with your wife.”

 “I am?”

 “Yes. You married up.”

 “I’m living the dream.”

 “So how much do you miss me, on a scale of one to ten, one being not at all and ten being unbearable heartbreak?”

 “I’m surprised you can hear words through my sobs.”

 “You’re sweet.”

 "Well, I do love and miss you,” he said, introducing sincerity to their conversation.

 “You meant that.”

 “Yes.”

 Donna felt herself getting a little emotional during a brief pause in their exchange. “I wish you were here, Josh.”

 “You’re naked right now, Donna. Believe me, your wish is nothing on mine.”

 “Even though it looks like I ate a balloon? Not a party balloon, a hot air one.”

 “Even though.”

 “‘Kay.” Donna was still smiling. She missed him like another limb but his voice, his conversation was enough to ease that for just a little while. “Tell me how the trip is going. You think he’s drumming up enough support in California?”

 “I want to hear about you and my little balloon before we talk business. Is everything okay? You feel okay?”

 “Yeah. I went to the doctor today and all is as it should be. The baby’s the slightest bit underweight but it’s nothing to worry about. And I bought a moses basket and a pram today, some little outfits, nothing extravagant…”

 “You didn’t tell me you had a sonogram today,” Josh said, unhappily.

 “I knew you wouldn’t like to miss it so I didn’t tell you. You had to go to California and you’d only have felt guilty.”

 “Well now I feel guilty.”

 “You shouldn’t, I didn’t tell you.”

 “That logic doesn’t quite work out.”

 “I’m sorry.”

 “Everything’s okay though? And you have pictures?”

 “The sonogram?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Yes. I’ll show you them when you get back.”

 “Can you send them to me? Scan them and send me them?” Josh said, with a tone of urgency. His keenness was endearing to his wife, who had no qualms about her response.

 “Of course.”

 “Thank you. And the baby stuff, be as extravagant as you want. I’ll go with you when I get back and we’ll get a onesie for every day.”

 “I don’t want to get too much before the baby’s here…”

 “What do you mean?”

 “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

 “I already think you’re crazy.”

 “I don’t wanna… I feel like if we go overboard before the baby’s here, it’ll jinx it or something. It’ll tempt the wrath from high atop the thing or whatever. I don’t know. I just want to get what we need…”

 “Donna, if it’s what you want, it’s what we’ll do.”

 “I just worry, you know.”

 “I know. You gotta tell me when you worry though, if not just because it makes me feel a little less crazy.”

 “Okay.”

 “Okay.”

 “So, Santos?”

 “They’re eating out of the palm of his hand. With none of the Republican candidates from California, I don’t think we’ll have a problem here but it can’t be anything less than a certainty. The DNC won’t get off my back about winning California but it’s a joke. The only reason we lost was that it was Vinick’s home state and it’s not Vinick we’re running against. We don’t know who we’re running against but I can’t see any of them being much of a challenge for California’s 55. We need to get back out to the swing states that we lost last time. We need to be in Ohio, Indiana, Florida… We need to get out to swing states we won last time too, make sure that they stay blue.”

 “It’s up to you to tell ‘em where to shove it Josh. Trust your instincts. You know electoral math, you know where Santos can win and how to make it happen. If you think California’s a waste of time, make your case for Ohio.”

 “Yeah. I don’t think Santos feels confident about California. Because we lost California despite San Andreo, he thinks it’s up for grabs.”

 “He’ll come ‘round. You’ll bring him ‘round.”

 “I’m just…”

 “What?”

 “Maybe I’m wrong.”

 “Say again.”

 “I said, maybe I’m wrong.”

 “Oh, you really said that. Josh, you know you’re right about this. _I_ know you are and I’m not even that clever. But you are right, Josh.”

 “You don’t make any sense.”

 “But I do.”

 “I really am right, aren’t I? It isn’t just me? I’m going to make sure we fill the schedule with Ohio, Indiana, Florida, maybe North Carolina and Virginia…”

 “You should stop by Georgetown sometime. We’d love to see you.”

 “I’m coming home someday, honey.”

 “Well that’s encouraging.”

 “Did I mention I miss you?”

 “Yes, you did tell me that but it never hurts to hear it again.”

 “I love you,” Josh reminded her. “Hey, you still naked?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Okay.”

 “That all you have to say about it?”

 “No, I have plenty to say about it but I don’t know if my calls are being bugged or whatever.”

 “I’m past caring it’s been that long since I’ve seen you.”

 “I know,” Josh turned on his side in the bed, as though in the hope that she might appear next to him.

 “The water’s cold,” she realized very suddenly.

 “You want to hang up?”

 “No. No, not unless you do,” she resisted.

 “Not even a little.”

 “Let me just…” Donna put the phone down for as brief a moment as she could manage while grabbing a towel to wrap around herself. “Sorry, I’m just going to get into bed. Are you already in bed?”

 “Yeah. Kind of. I’m sort of lying over the sheets in yesterday’s clothes.”

 “You should put your pajamas on, darling.”

 “My oversized pajamas that you packed for no clear reason, my t-shirt and boxers or my birthday suit?”

 “Are you asking me to make this decision for you?”

 “No.” He began undressing from the day, choosing a baggy white t-shirt to get under the bedcovers in. It was Donna’s favorite, the white t-shirt. Even though she wasn’t there, that’s all he was thinking about.

 “You picked the t-shirt didn’t you?”

 “No.”

 “Okay.” Donna grabbed a book from a pile of political biographies and put it on her bedside table with the intention to read it once she was off the phone. She put on the only clean nightdress that fit before sliding into bed as well. Unlike Josh, she got to enjoy their marital bed. She had put the electric blanket on an hour earlier to add to the home comforts that Josh was missing out on.

 As they readjusted, they happily stayed on the phone not talking to each other for a little while. The sound of the other just moving about, being there, provided comforting background noise.

 “I’m tucked up now.”

 “I like you like that.”

 “Like what?”

 “When you’re all tucked up in bed. I come in when you’re dozing off with just your head poking above the sheets and you look at me like, ‘don’t you dare get in this bed and disturb the peace’. Sometimes you look at me for a cuddle and sometimes you give me the glare for being a fidget when I get in the bed, but that’s only ‘cause you sleep too close to the middle.”

 “I do not.”

 “You do. I come in and you’re practically between the two pillows.”

 “Don’t exaggerate.”

 “It’s true.”

 “I just don’t like it when one side feels cold.”

 “I know. Does it feel cold now?”

 “No, because I’ve had the electric blanket on.”

 “Oh, you’re cruel.”

 “Why am I?”

 “Because I’m stuck in this cold hotel room and all I want to do is get in that toasty bed with my beautiful wife.”

 “Quit moaning. You’re in California, it can’t be that cold.”

 “Hey, did you notice the compliment in there?”

 “I did.”

 “And yet you chose to ignore it.”

 “Yes. It was overshadowed by the moaning.”

 “Hey, do you want to try some phone sex?”

 “I thought you were concerned that people were bugging your phone. Besides which, I feel very pregnant at this moment.”

 “You feel very pregnant? It’s kind of a binary thing.”

 “Josh, do you really want to-?”

 “Nope. Absolutely not. You’re right. No phone sex.”

 “At some point in the future we can have some actual sex though.”

 “How far into the future do you anticipate that being?”

 “I don’t know but you should definitely look into it further when you get home.” Donna paused for a second before suddenly feeling a little overcome. “I miss you!”

 They were quiet for a minute before Josh changed the subject. “Did you see last night’s _Daily Show_?”

 “Yes! You had time to watch it?” Donna sounded surprised.

 “Yeah, the hotel has these TVs that let you watch recorded things so… I don’t know. I watched it anyway. _The Colbert Report_ was good too.”

 “So good, right? It’s okay to enjoy this stuff even when they’re making fun of our guy, right? Because they do it with style. And I’m madly in love with John Oliver.”

 “Donna, you could do so much better.”

 “Oh my god, I meant to tell you: I met Nate Silver yesterday!”

 “Uhoh.”

 “I didn’t say anything weird.”

 “You have your own barometer for that so I’m not sure I believe you.”

 “All I’m saying is that he does wonderful things for the math community. I like him a lot. I think he should be put on a stamp or something, actually. We should have Nate Silver day. Do you think that I’ve lost my chance with him now?”

 “Because you’re pregnant?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Maybe.”

 “Did you see his early numbers for the campaign?”

 “Yeah, it’s too early for Nate Silver really.”

 “Josh, it’s never too early for Nate Silver," Donna said with startling intensity.

 “I feel dirty. Just because he guessed more states than me in ’06 doesn’t mean I deserve his algorithms shoved in my face every time there’s numbers.”

 “Sure but 48 – 49, Josh.”

 “You’re cruel.”

 “You love me.”

 “Only when you’re not throwing Nate Silver in my face.”

 “Don’t be tetchy, Josh. It’s unbecoming.”

 “I wish I could tickle you into shutting up with your damn teasing.”

 “You said you wouldn’t tickle me while I was pregnant.”

 “I forgot for a second,” he said, surprised at himself.

 “You wouldn’t if you were here.”

 “How big are you now? Are you exaggerating?”

 “No! I measured. It’s almost 40 inches, Josh. I’m concerned I might be pregnant with an elephant or something.”

 “Surely it would have shown up on the sonogram.”

 “They don’t make the technology for species identification, Joshua, so who knows what’s cooking in there.”

 “Donna, in the three years that we’ve been married have you had sex with anyone else?”

 “How dare you.”

 “Then I’m fairly sure it’s a human baby. I’m pretty confident in my genealogy.”

 “Well so am I.”

 “Well then.”

 “Well then what?”

 “Well then, it’s probably going to be a human baby.”

 “We should celebrate.”

 “I plan to.”

 “Oh my god, Josh, it’s half three in the morning." Donna suddenly caught sight of the alarm clock.

 “You want to hang up?”

 “No,” Donna replied.

 “Okay.”

 “It’s your mom’s birthday next week, did you remember?”

 “No. But I have the good fortune to be married to you.”

 “Yeah.”

 “I’ll buy her something nice tomorrow.”

 “Will you have time?”

 “If I don’t then I’ll get Margaret to send a card and flowers. It’s okay.”

 There was a pause in the conversation before Donna spoke again. “Sometimes it’s weird that I’m not your assistant anymore. Isn’t it weird?”

 “I guess. What do you mean?”

 “Sometimes I just think, when we’re talking about the baby or we’re just talking about… anything, I remember what came before this. You never think about it?”

 “Sure, I think about it. Actually this conversation is a lot like the way we were: it comes with the guarantee of no sex.”

 “It’s nice though. I like talking to you. Just talking.”

 “You think we do less of it now?”

 “Perhaps. I don’t know,” Donna reflected. “It was fun though, wasn’t it? I know it was a long time, and it felt like a long time, but it was fun just being… best friends. I still remember every time you needlessly leaned over my shoulder and when you gave me that ID pass…”

 “Yeah, I’m pretty glad you were in my office that day waiting for me.”

 “I wasn’t waiting for you in particular, I wanted a job!”

 “Well, I was waiting for you.”

 “Yeah?”

 “Yeah.”

 “You’re cute. We should go out together sometime, you know, if you’re not busy.”

 “I would never turn you down.”

 “I think we know how I got pregnant now.”

 “Yes,” Josh laughed. “Hey Donna?”

 “Yeah?”

 “I really can’t wait to meet our baby.”

 “I know.” She was beaming now as he reminded her. "This baby’s gonna look after me when I’m old.”

 “ _I’_ m going to look after you when you’re old.”

 “You’ll be old too. Old _er_. We’ll have someone who’s not old to look after us.”

 “So long as they like us.”

 “What’s not to like?” Donna paused. “Well, at least I’ll be looked after. You can hide under my bed at the care home.”

 “What’s that going to do to my arthritis!”

 “What arthritis?”

 “When I’m old.”

 “Well you should have spent more time getting our kid to like you. Candy, bribery, anything. Now you’ll have all the nights on that cold, hard floor to think about it.”

 “If that baby doesn’t like me, I _will_ bribe it. I’m sorry if I undermine your parenting but I, here and now, admit that I will stoop to all kinds of cheap tactics to get that kid to love me.”

 “You won’t need to.”

 “Well…”

 “You won’t need to. We’re a team. We’re going to do this as a team.”

 “I think things work best that way with us.”

 “Me too."

"I miss having you on the campaign so much. I wake up and even though you never used to sleep in the bed with me, you would be there when I got to work. You were the first face I’d see when I got in more often than not.”

 “I’ll be on the campaign next time. There’ll be at least one infant crawling all over me 24/7, I’m sure, but I’ll be there. Save my seat.”

 “Yeah.”

 “How’s Sam?”

 “He’s great. He’s full of energy, and I’m delegating much more than usual.”

 “That’s good.” 

“Yeah, I think having an end date on the work has given him a new lease of life. I think he’s immersing himself in this campaign so he’s got all the more experience for next time, as well.”

 “You think he’s going to run?”

 “Eventually.”

 “Do you think you’ll be on his team?”

 “It’s Sam.”

 “Yeah.”

 “It’s our decision, you and me, but it’s Sam.”

 “We’ll think about it when we need to.”

 “You don’t like the idea?”

 “No, I do. I just…”

 “Donna?”

 “We haven’t really talked about… I don’t know. I’m not used to us talking beyond the following day’s schedule.”

 “Yeah, we’re not really planners, are we?”

 “I was thinking we might see how this one goes and possibly have more children, you know, in a couple of years.”

 “Oh.”

 “We don’t have to.”

 “No. I-”

 “I mean, let’s see how well we do with one first, obviously.”

 “Donna, I didn’t want to put pressure on you. It’s you who has to give up your body. I’m on board with whatever _you_ want. When Sam’s putting his team together, if you want me to say no, I will. Sweetheart, he’s gonna ask us both anyway.”

 “Yeah,” she agreed. Not wanting to make it clear, Donna was a little overwhelmed and so stayed silent for a moment. A combination of hormones and the sweetness of her husband had led to get a little emotional. “Josh, I’m so in love with you.”

 “Remember this moment when I break the fancy plates, please,” Josh joked.

 “I’ll try.” Donna looked at the clock. “Hey, what time are you up?”

 “Five.” Josh turned over to observe the time. “I think I’ll just stay up now. Unless you need to go.”

 “I’m good.”

 “Me too.”

 Josh and Donna talked until they were interrupted by the hotel phone.  Reluctant to answer, when he eventually did, Josh heard the very predictable words, “Good morning, this is your 5am wake up call.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! Feedback would be very much appreciated.


End file.
